3 But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. 4 For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted—you may well put up with it!
2 Corinthians 11:3-4 NKJV

Introduction

Lately I've been wrestling with a major question. I can't put the question into a direct words, but I can indentify 3 specific conversations that have led to this unspoken question. One is documented here on the podcast, one I think I have mentioned on the podcast, and the other is a conversation I had with a friend from work very recently. I'm going to briefly recap those conversations to try to explain the question, and then we'll jump in to some Bible verses.

Events that Inspired this Episode

Legalism

Back in Season 2 of the podcast I brought on my cousin who has a degree from seminary to talk about legalism. Each person's description of legalism is slightly different, which is part of why people disagree on what is or isn't legalism. The dictionary definition of legalism from a Christian viewpoint[1] is: "the idea that salvation is earned by obeying the law or doing good works." Most commonly, however, I hear people use the phrase legalism to describe those who believe you should keep the commandments and follow the rules and ideals that God and Messiah set forth. We'll touch on this some as I get in to Bible verses, but if you really want to hear my thoughts and opinions on this topic you can go back to the original podcast episode.[2]

Scholarly Study vs. The Holy Spirit

About 2 years ago, I listened to a video where a woman was contrasting scholarly study of the word versus learning from the Holy Spirit. I wish I could find the video again, because at the time it seemed like she was against reading the Bible and more for just following where the Spirit leads. I know that our interpretation of what people say can often be colored by our own experiences at the time, so I'm not 100% that what I took away from it was what she intended. I can definitely see a difference between reading the text and letting the Holy Spirit interpret it for you versus trying to interpret it yourself or allowing so called scholars to do the interpreting. However in the days, months, and years that have followed that video, I have been asking about how deep we are supposed to get into the study of the word.

I say this as someone who has been studying the Bible most of my life, and deeply studying it for about 10 years. I've picked up foundational knowledge of Hebrew, learned how to use interlinear Bibles and concordances, researched history and brushed up on the literary devices I was supposed to learn in English classes... I've put alot of time into studying the Word, which has been rewarding and an amazing experience, but it's not feasible for everyone. Especially when we step out of the U.S. or into other time periods. People in war torn countries don't have time to do these kinds of deep dives. People who are illiterate can't do these kinds of studies. As a black woman, for most of history it has been either illegal for me to read or highly frowned upon. During the Dark Ages the Catholic Church controlled the masses by only allowing the Bible to be printed in Latin instead of the everyday language of the congregation! During Messiah's time, the Pharisees would have been the ones who studied the Word and if you go back before Moses, there were no written texts—that we know of.

Without a doubt the Holy Spirit is supposed to be the one leading our relationship with the Most High. But there are multiple spirits in the world, how do we know which spirit is talking to us without a standard?

A Simple Conversation

The above two conversations were already swirling in my mind when I sat down for lunch and my friend expressed his struggle with believing in Jesus because he couldn't figure out how people were supposed to know about him. Let's go back to the time of Messiah's birth; the faith of the Old Testament was mostly confined to Israel, Northern Africa and Southern Europe. You'd need that information to even know a Messiah was due (like the wise men who traveled from afar because they saw the signs). After Messiah was born, had His ministry, was crucified, and raised from the dead, the story of His life and ministry had to spread. It wasn't like today with the internet and social media, and as I said earlier, most people would have been illiterate. The gospel had to spread by word of mouth through travel.

The reason a large portion of the world is Christian today isn't because the original religion from the disciples reached the ends of the Earth. What actually happened is Christians posed a problem for Rome until they decided "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." Rome intermingled the original concepts with pagan concepts from other religions, introducing Sunday worship, Christmas, Easter, and a host of other things. Rome collapsed into the Roman Catholic Chruch (RCC) would ruled most of Europe with an iron fist. Then those same countries that were ruled by the RCC went and conquered other people. Then the Reformation happened and even though the Protestant Church broke away from Rome, they kept some of Rome's traits, traditions, and customs. All those European countries influenced by Rome and the Reformation created colonies and deemed those different from them to be savages. Insert here a dissertation on the whitewashing of Christianity and how false Christianity promotes white supremacy. Long story short all those colonies now have the Gospel even if its now packaged in a distorted religion.

But that took 1700 years, and communist countries like China and North Korea still forbid religion. People in North Korea don't have Bibles and are not learning about God or Jesus or salvation. And at the same time Rome was going out conquering and to conquer, the Ottoman empire spread in the the Middle East. Most countries in the Middle East have Isalm as the official religion and they aren't necessarily welcoming to other faiths. Isalm has a version of Jesus—they call Him Isa—but it's not the same Gospel as the one told in the Bible.

So in all these years since Messiah's life on Earth, what about the people who have never heard of Him?

Bible Verses to Ponder

Prayer, scripture, and discernment are all needed for faith in general, but even more so to sort out this conundrum. As I've been meditating on the conversations previously discussed, quite a few verses came to my mind. Let's discuss some of them.

He is the Rock, His work is perfect;
For all His ways are justice,
A God of truth and without injustice;
Righteous and upright is He.
Deuteronomy 32:4 NKJV

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding;
Proverbs 3:5 NKJV

Knowing Who Jesus Is

Let's start with this question about Who Messiah is. I have very mixed feelings about this question. The general consensus of Christianity is summed up in John 3:16 which includes confessing that Jesus came and died for our sins. There's also a verse in 1 John 4 warning that those who deny Jesus came in the flesh are not of God. In addition, there are people who hold what I would call legalistic doctrines that also require you to use Messiah's Hebrew name exclusively. Ironically they don't agree on what that name should be. The mainstream accepted name for Him is Yeshua, but it's possible that His name was Yehoshua. Some argue that this can't be His name beause it doesn't have the Father's name (YHWH) in it, and so they say His name is Yahshua. I've also seen people use Yahawahsi; I have no idea where that comes from.

So here we are at the intersection of knowing who the Messiah is or even that He exists, the need to study to know that Jesus is the English pronunciation of Iesous which is the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew Yeshua or Yahshua, and the question of how much of this you need to know for salvation vs. where people are being legalistic.

I've mentioned previously that I while I think it is good to know that Jesus isn't Messiah's real name, I don't think that's a salvation issue. It's really more of an apologetics thing for when people question whether He existed on the basis that "the letter J didn't exist back then." There's also some apologetics in there about the fact that even though Iesous and Zues sound similar, they are not from the same root words as some claim. I feel like this level of detail is for combating false doctrine.

That being said, what about people who don't know the story at all? The people who have no clue that someone came to die for our sins?

This is where I get tangled up. I told my coworker, that I think the most important thing is to understand the essence of who Jesus was. The lessons and concepts He taught are the principles of the Kingdom of God. My thought process is that if you accept those concepts—which can be given to you by the Spirit and don't necessarily require reading or study—then if and when you meet Him you will accept Him. Jeremiah 31:33 and Hebrews 8:10 talk about how God would write the law in His people's heart and mind. If you look at the world, people know the basics. Every culture understands the fundamental concepts of being good to your neighbor, being honest, etc. So, I know someone in North Korea is unlikely to recite John 3:16 and probably has never heard the name of Jesus, but I think it's possible that through the Spirit they could still experience His love and teachings.

In Acts 17, we find people worshiping an unknown God using pagan methods. Paul tells us that God overlooked a time when people didn't know any better, but now God is commanding all men to repent. In the context of the passage, it seems Paul is saying that when they didn't know any better, it was fine. Now that they do know better it's time to do better. This makes me think if you don't have the means, the resources, the time, the intelligence (gift of knowledge), He understands but if you do you are meant to learn about Him.

Is it Legalism to Follow the Commandments?

That brings be back to this concept of legalism. A major point to note in this conversation is that there is a huge difference in doing something because you are saved and doing something to be saved. Think about a relationship. My dad loves westerns, but my mom likes mysteries. Since getting married, my mom has started watching westerns and my dad has started watching mysteries. They don't do this to get the other person to love them; they do it because they love the other person. We don't keep God's commandments because we want Him to love us, we keep them because we love Him.

There are several verses confirming that both God and Jesus expects us to keep the commandments, but what exactly are these commandments? Genesis 26:5 says Abraham followed God's commandments—this was before Moses penned the the law, which is evidence that God's commandments existed before Israel (and will exist after Israel). In Exodus 24:12, God says He will give Moses the commandments on tablets of stone. Isaiah 34 reiterates this point, but the commands God gives to write include more than just the Ten Commandments. Moses was on the mountain with God for 40 days writing out God's commandments, which does imply its more than just the Ten Commandments.

Most denominations claim to adhere to the Ten Commandments, but generally they don't keep Sabbath. Of the denominations I've encountered that do keep Sabbath, there's varying opinions on other commands like keeping the feast days (which are called out in Exodus 34), adhering to the dietary restrictions, wearing mixed fibers, etc. Then, there are commands that we all follow without thinking, such as the section on not committing incest.

We could get deep into the nitty gritty about these laws and which are applicable to us today, but for this post, the concern isn't the specifics of each law but how to determine which are the commandments we are responsible for. Every denomination teaches something different and you can find arguments for and against pretty much everything online. Of course we're supposed to pray and let the Holy Spirit give us guidance, but studying still has to happen. For instance, growing up, I never met anyone who kept Sabbath as described in the Bible and everyone I knew went to church on Sunday, the day the Roman Catholic chose to mimic Sun worship. It took studying to learn about the Biblical Sabbath, and just when I thouhgt I had a grasp of what that meant, videos started popping up suggesting a whole new way to calculate when the Sabbath is... This same conundrum about time exists surrounding the feast days. Our calendar isn't the same as the one in the Bible. To celebrate the feasts, for example, you need to know when they are. Can you determine the 15th of Nisan without using Google?

If keeping the commandments is an artifact of your salvation and you need all this informaiton that isn't straight foward to get to keep the commandments, does tht mean salvation also requires you to study? Or are we supposed to just know from the Holy Spirit, as well as know what crosses the line from being obedient to trying to earn salvation?

Studying the Word

Speaking of studying and legalism, there are ample verses to suggest there is a right way and a wrong way to worship God. For instance, during the Exodus, the Israelites created a golden calf, like the what they saw in Egypt, said the golden calf represented YHWH, and proceeded to worship the image they created. God was very angry at them for this. Is this not the same as attaching Christian symbolism to pagan holidays like Christmas and Easter? However, you'd have to study both the word and history to know that Easter and Christmas have pagan origins...

Let's take Easter for example. Many churches now refer to this holiday as Resurrection Sunday to distance themselves from the word Easter which is likely derived from Eostre or Ishtar, a pagan goddess. However, the calculation of this date is still based on the spring equinox because it is rooted in sun worship festivals. The resurrection of Messiah is tied to Passover, the feast day or holy day commanded by God in the Old Testament. Not only was Passover meant to remind Israel that they had been brought out of bondage in Egypt and redeemed from death, but it was to point forward to the Messiah who saves the world from bondage and redeems us from death permenantly. Messiah is our Passover lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7). The Passover lamb was meant to be sacrificed on the 14th day of the 1st month (Exodus 12; Leviticus 23:5; Numbers 9). The Israelites used a lunar calendar, while in the West, we use the a sun based calendar. This isn't something that is obvious by reading the Bible; simply reading that Passover should be on the 14th day of the 1st month would lead Westerners to think it should be celebrated on January 14. Furthermore, even after you determined that you need to use the Israelite's calendar, you would have to search for that calendar. Note, the lunar calendar of ancient Israel is not the same calendar used by Islam (and most Arab countries in the Middle East today) even though both are lunar calendars. In order to identify the 14th of the 1st month, you'd have to use a Jewish calendar. We're not even going to go down the rabbit hole of theories about whether this calendar is accruate to what the ancient Israelites used or not. A Google Search for this information tells us that this year (2025), Passover is Saturaday April 12. Easter isn't until the following Sunday, on April 20. But if you didn't have the internet and you didn't know any Jewish people and your pastor told you Easter was the same as Passover, how would you ever know the difference? Even if you questioned the name change, without any information on the origin of the word, how is Easter/Passover any different from Jesus/Yeshua?

I've been studying the Word for years and there are tons of details like this. Does God expect everyone to do deep dives into history and context to find the right way to worship God? If so, does that not veer into the realm of legalism? How is that fair to people who didn't grow up in the culture specific to the scriptures? in Acts 17, Paul tells us God overlooks the times when we are ignorant. This implies that the people who didn't have access to this information or didn't have the time or capacity to study this deep aren't accountable for the information...

Conclusions

I don't actually have conclusions, just questions. Honestly, it makes me feel like there are people who are called to know the truth—these would be the people with the gifts of knowledge and wisdom. In theory, these would also be the people leading congregations and nations, eliminating the need for the congregation to do the same. However, this would still require people to have discernment to weed of false teachers. That goes back to my original question about how we know which spirit is speaking. It's quite the tangled web. Let me know what you tihnk, and when the Holy Spirit answers my questions, I'll let you guys know what He told me.

References and Footnotes

1. "Leaglism". Oxford English Dictionary; visited March 2025
2. Ree Hughes. "Legalism (feat. San)". PSALM to God. October 6, 2020